The present invention relates to a strip guiding device adapt to allow disposing strips of a material, in particular straps of paper, around at least a transmission pulley.
Although in the following description reference will be made only to cigarette making machines, it is clear that the strip guiding device of the present invention may be applied to all those machines in which a strip of material, particularly paper, is made to advance along a non rectilinear path which can with difficulty be approached by an operator.
The cigarette making machines usually comprise a feed assembly inside which a strip of paper from a reel is fed through a plurality of operative assemblies till it reaches a deflector pulley around which the strip is wound to continue then moving horizontally on a bench along which it is progressively bent in a transversal direction to form a continuous cylinder. Adjacent the said deflector pulley the strip or web of paper which advances along the said bench receives a continuous carpet of cut tobacco which is then enclosed inside the said continuous cylinder so as to form a continuous cigarette rod.
When, during the operation of the cigarette making machine, the strip of paper breaks upstream with respect to the said deflector pulley, a sensor which usually is disposed on the path followed by the strip of paper automatically stops the cigarette making machine, thus allowing the operator to intervene. Among the various operations which the operator has to carry out in order to place the machine in service, one of the most complicated is certainly that of rewinding the strip of paper around the said deflector pulley and making it to pass into the space, usually narrow, between the said bench and the end of a conveyor which supplies the said tobacco carpet.
Such operation, which is difficult to carry out even on a cigarette making machine operating with a single cigarette rod, becomes almost impossible when it has to be carried out on a machine operating with a double cigarette rod, i.e. a machine apt to simultaneously produce two cigarette rods. In fact, in the machine of this latter type the strips of paper are two and have to be wound around respective deflector pulleys disposed coaxially, before advancing along the bench on which the cigarette rods are formed. Accordingly, one of the said two deflector pulleys is completely covered by the other with respect to the operator who has to intervene, and, consequently, substantially inaccessible.